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New Forest East

FOREIGN AFFAIRS – SECURITY, DEFENCE & FOREIGN POLICY REVIEW - 13 January 2020

FOREIGN AFFAIRS – SECURITY, DEFENCE & FOREIGN POLICY REVIEW - 13 January 2020

Dr Julian Lewis:  In support of what my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) has said, may I remind the Foreign Secretary that, in 2017-18, we had a National Security Capability Review that sought to look at both security and defence together, but it was so limited by having to be financially or fiscally neutral that it meant that extra resources for, for example, cyber-warfare would be granted only at the cost of making cuts in, for example, the Royal Marines? That is no way to conduct a review – to play off one necessary part, say security, against another necessary part, such as defence.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab): I think my right hon. Friend makes an important point, although at the same time we need to be mindful of the overarching financial parameters that any Government – any responsible Government – are going to be within if we are to make credible investment decisions. Certainly, on the issue of cyber and its being somehow nudged out of focus or set up as a zero-sum game with troops, I can assure him that that will not be the case. Cyber increasingly plays an important role not just in our security, but in our ability to project our foreign policy.]